It appears that like most years, everyone’s exercise of choice to burn of Thanksgiving dinner was a rousing round of Black Friday shopping. The Apple Stores were no exception — and according to analyst Gene Munster, the Apple Stores were selling 11 iPads an hour.
It’s only one data point, but Munster and his staff were scoping out the foot traffic at the Mall of America in Minneapolis — one of the largest malls in the country. They spent 8 hours tracking what was going on in the Apple Store, and 2 hours at the Microsoft store.
What they found was that the Microsoft store had 47% less foot traffic than the Apple Store, and that shoppers bought an average of 17.2 items per hour at the Apple Store, but just 3.5 items per hour at Microsoft. And of those Microsoft purchases? Only two weren’t XBox games. Perhaps the most damning statistic is that while they watched the stores, 11 iPads were sold an hour, but not a single Surface.
However, it’s not hard to pick apart major flaws in this study. It’s at one store in the country, and the Apple Store was watched for four times as long as the Microsoft. Hell, that means they only saw 7 purchases at the Microsoft store, which is hardly a significant sample size. And what hours were they there for?
Nonetheless, it does point to a lack of excitement about the relatively untested Surface. And it’s not all roses for Apple — last year they were moving 15 iPads per hour.
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